Windows 7 Start up freeze on two hard drives

I recently successfully installed a new video card on my pc. Or so I thought. The day after installation if froze on the “Starting Windows” startup page. I removed the new card thinking it was the problem. I restarted my pc and it froze again. I tried system repair but it froze on that. I have a back- up cloned copy of the hard drive so I hooked the backup hard drive and it did the exact same thing. I even tried safe mode but it froze on CLASSPNP.SYS . Could anyone offer any ideas how I might proceed?

Sounds like it's choking on a driver. Can you uninstall the existing Display drivers in Control Panel>Programs and Device Manager, then enable Automatically deliver drivers via Windows Update (Step 3) to Check for Updates, install all Important and Optional Updates which may include patches needed to make the hardware run correctly, and drivers Win7 wants.

If not and you're stuck with Standard VGA Display driver, import the card's driver from its Support Downloads webpage. I'd not include any bloatware package like CCC.

I cannot get to the Control Panel. It freezes even after I removed the video card.

Boot into System Recovery Options to System Restore to a point before this happened.

Once it's stable follow the driver steps I gave you earlier.

I tried to boot into system recovery options using the installation disc. It loaded the files but froze on the "Starting Windows" page. It freezes before the Windows 7 logo appears. It says "Starting Windows" and Microsoft Corporation on the bottom of the screen and the rest of the screen is black. Any suggestions?

One more question since I have tried this on two hard drives with the same result, could this be a BIOS or motherboard issue?

Try resetting the BIOS to defaults in BIOS Setup. Check the SATA controller setting first to make note.

Next try flash stick boot to REcovery Options from Step 6 of Troubleshooting Windows 7 Failure to Start.

If no media will boot then reseat and test your RAM from Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7.

I reset the BIOS and tried to use Windows Defender online. I downloaded onto a USB and tried to boot from their and it froze on the same spot. What should I try next?

Is card unplugged? Did you knock something loose or unseat RAM Or HD?

Try RAM and HD Diagnostics from troubleshoot tutorial below

Try unplugging Disk drive before booting stick. Then try unplugging hard drive before booting stick and then disk.